Kasaragod: What had been one of Kerala’s most edge-of-the-seat constituencies turned into a stunning landslide for the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).

For two elections, BJP's former state president K. Surendran kept the constituency on edge until the last round of counting. In 2016, he lost by just 89 votes to IUML's P B Abdul Razak. In 2021, he lost again, this time by 745 votes to Youth League leader A K M Ashraf.

This time, there was no photo finish.

Ashraf polled 96,948 votes, breached the 50% vote-share mark for the first time in the constituency, and defeated Surendran by a staggering 29,252 votes, the biggest victory margin ever recorded in Manjeshwar.

Even the League had not anticipated such a margin. On the eve of counting, Ashraf had said he hoped to better the party’s previous best in the constituency-- the 13,188-vote victory posted by Cherkalam Abdulla in 2001. Then the rival was the BJP's C K Padmanabhan. But Ashraf ended up more than doubling that margin.

Compared to 2021, Ashraf added 31,190 votes to his tally. His vote share jumped from 38.14% to 52.12% -- a massive swing of nearly 14 percentage points.

In contrast, Surendran, contesting in Manjeshwar for the fourth time, managed only marginal growth in raw votes. He polled 67,696 votes -- just 2,683 more than in 2021, but his vote share dipped by 1.65 percentage points to 36.05%.

But the BJP’s performance alone does not explain Ashraf’s sweep.

The bigger story was the collapse of the Left. The CPM, which usually commands around 23% of the vote in Manjeshwar, saw its support nearly halved. Its candidate, CPM district secretariat member K R Jayananda, polled just 21,212 votes, down sharply from the 40,639 votes the Left secured in 2021. Its vote share crashed from 23.57% to 11.29%.

In what appears to be a first in Kerala, a CPM candidate contesting on the party’s official hammer, sickle and star symbol failed to secure the minimum votes required to recover the deposit.

Under election rules, a candidate must secure at least one-sixth of the total valid votes polled -- in this case, 31,219 votes -- to recover the deposit. The CPM managed only 21,212 votes.

Much of that erosion appears to have moved towards Ashraf, considering 60% of the LDF base comprises Muslim voters.

Manjeshwar is perhaps the only Assembly constituency in India where the BJP enjoys nearly 80% consolidation among Hindu voters and still cannot win.

This time, around 81,700 Hindus cast their votes, compared to roughly 1.01 lakh Muslim voters and around 3,500 Christian voters. (In 2021, 83,000 Hindus and Muslims each cast their votes.)

BJP insiders believe the party managed to raise Hindu consolidation to nearly 83%. But that was offset by an unusually strong consolidation among Muslim voters.

With the Left weakened by anti-incumbency and the statewide pro-UDF wave, those votes appear to have moved decisively towards Ashraf.

This election also came after a Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls. Around 16,000 names were deleted, while 19,000 new voters were added. Political estimates within both camps suggested nearly 11,000 of the deleted names were BJP supporters, while 14,000 of the newly added voters leaned towards the UDF.

That reshaped the contest even before polling began.

Ashraf also went into the election with organisational momentum. The UDF had swept all eight panchayats that make up the constituency.

The warning signs for the BJP emerged from the very first round. In the first 14 booths of Manjeshwar panchayat, a Hindu belt, the IUML was expecting a lead of around 1,300 votes. Instead, it opened with a lead of nearly 2,500 votes.

Across the constituency, Ashraf consistently outperformed even his party’s internal projections. In Mangalpady panchayat, the IUML expected a lead of 10,000 votes. It got 12,500.

In Manjeshwar panchayat, it expected 5,500. It got 7,600.

In Vorkady, the League expected a lead of 1,500. It got 2,700.

In Meenja, where the IUML expected a tie, it ended up taking a lead of 600 votes.

Even in Hindu-dominated panchayats such as Paivalike and Enmakaje, where the BJP was expected to build a lead of 3,000 votes and 4500 votes, respectively, it got leads of only 162 votes and 3,700 votes.

By the time counting ended, the result had gone far beyond candidates or campaign slogans.

For Surendran, it was a fourth defeat in Manjeshwar. And for the BJP, Manjeshwar remains what it has been for over three decades, a party consigned to second place. Only now, it is no longer within touching distance, but a distant No. 2, despite consolidating around 80% of the Hindu vote.

After the result, Ashraf dedicated the victory to the “secular-minded people of Manjeshwar.”